Chris Arendt

Christopher Arendt, who served at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, describes “how one goes about becoming a concentration camp guard.” His job was to track the movements of detainees. Sometimes when he started his shift at 4:30 am, “there would be a little paper in the wall with a number on it, which represented a detainee inside an interrogation room, which was anywhere from maybe 10, 20 degrees in temperature with loud music playing. … Sometimes that detainee would stay there for my entire 12 to 14-hour shift, shackled to the floor by his hands and his feet.” Arendt also describes a procedure used to punish inmates who become rowdy, which involves spraying them in the face with an extremely painful, long-lasting chemical and then sometimes beating them up. These punishments are taped by the military—he taped several himself, and wants to show them, but he doubts the tapes will be released.

Arendt is followed by a filmed interview with an Iraqi mother named Um Ahmed, who describes a terrifying raid by American soldiers on her home. The raid turned out to be a mistake: they were after a militia member who lived next door. The film is in Arabic with English subtitles.